Iced Earth - The Last Laugh

The main work that occupied Beethoven’s imagination during this period was certainly the Third Symphony (it has not yet been called “Heroic”). However, sketches for it were side by side with numerous other designs. Some of these Beethoven brought to the end at about the same time (piano variations on the theme of the English song “Rule, Britain, by the Seas,” Sonata No. 21, Triple Concert), others waited for their realization for several more years (the first sketches of future symphonies - Sixth and Fifth, in such a chronological sequence), and some remained abandoned. For example, twenty-odd pages are occupied by detailed sketches of the begun but unfinished opera Flames of Vesta on the Shikaneder libretto, which Beethoven took up after the Third Symphony.